I'll see if I can get 'Do the Boogaloo' onto Youtube in the near future, but in the meantime - It's Boogaloo Time !

UPDATE - Done it. More boogaloo.

On a more depressing note ... I always wondered how ageing beauty, wonderful singer and hopeless smackhead Nico, on whom I have blogged here and here, got on in her declining, Manchester days hanging out with the likes of John Cooper Clarke. Nico - in the chip shop queue ?

Alas, it was all pretty damn sordid. From her last keyboard player and collaborator James Young's book, some excerpts. Not child or work-friendly - don't read while having your tea.

2 comments:

As a person I've no doubt she was pretty damned obnoxious. But look at the lives of lots of celebrities. John Lennon was a pretty nasty person to certain people. Jim Morrison was a total pillock. Look at the way Jagger/Richards treated Jones. Lou Reed was a complete bastard.

And it's not just rock stars. How many film actors and actresses are there who act like prima donnas and make their co-stars want to strangle them.

Nico made several good LPs: Chelsea Girl, Marble Index, The End, Desertshore; but they increasingly became less interesting. By the 1980s her output was crap and she basically traded on her back catalogue and association with more talented artists. There was a sense she was stuck in a cul de sac. She had become famous for junkie associations and trading on that had become her career. If she abandoned it, where could she go.

I saw her a couple of times. There was a sense of importance because this was the closest "we'd ever get" to seeing the legendary Velvet Underground and the audience were very forgiving.

The second time I left with a sense that I'd been to Batley Variety club and seen a 1960s pop group dutifully playing their hits to the cabaret audience. Only one original member left and no particular enthusiasm from them. What energy there was came from the "new" members, who were in diapers when the hits were fresh.